


Through the Pink Door

by GeneralIrritation



Series: Eight-Oh-Three [3]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Also there are monsters., Alt present where everything is beautiful and nothing hurts., F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-29
Updated: 2019-04-29
Packaged: 2020-02-09 18:01:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18643237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GeneralIrritation/pseuds/GeneralIrritation
Summary: Kate Kane is a woman with two fantastic parents, a generous twin sister, and a girlfriend who loves her very much.Kate Kane thinks something is horrifyingly wrong with this picture.thegeneralreturns.tumblr.com





	Through the Pink Door

It is said that, during the first two weeks of marriage, that the menial chores and quotidian housework either partner does is now their job for the entirety of the union.  If one takes out the trash, or does the dishes, or mops the kitchen floor, one will do so until death do they and their beloved part.

Batwoman figured this was why she was stuck fighting the magic shit.

Kate Kane had drifted through a spiritual, emotional, and sexual ennui after she had been kicked out of West Point Academy for being a lesbian (one year before Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was repealed, which would have prevented her ouster, adding salt o a particularly grievous wound).  She had drifted from bar to bar, bed to bed, until one night she was mugged. Far from being helpless, Kate pummeled the poor bastard into the alley pavement. Kate did not know the extent of the further damage she would have done, had the Batman not descended from above to intervene.

Seeing the Bat symbol on his chest provided her a moment of clarity.

She had been denied one way to serve a greater good.

Now, she would take another.

Kate had begun to train for a life of fighting crime on Gotham City’s streets, when Batman disappeared.

More than being discouraged, Kate trained harder.  Using the contacts of her father, Colonel Jacob Kane, she departed the country for a year to partake in dangerous combat and endurance regimens.  She trekked through the Sahara on a thimble full of water. She fought multiple enemies in a pool of her own blood. Every manner of pain and exhaustion that could be visited upon the human body had been visited upon Katherine Rebecca Kane tenfold.

At the end of that year she was, in a phrase often utilized by military instructors, _“Born Again Hard.”_  She returned to Gotham City where, with the help of her father, she would be the hero that Gotham City could look to in its darkest hours…

...only to find that while she had been away, Batman had returned, and had saved Gotham from some costumed jagoff who called himself _“The Undying,”_ who had been holding the city hostage.

 _Well,_ that _just fucking figures, now doesn’t it?_ Kate thought at the time.

Not wanting her year of Hell to have been for nothing, she decided to suit up anyway.  She hit the streets as Batwoman, and on her first night out, taking the ruckus to The Ventriloquist, Batman yet again intervened.  Only this time, upon setting eyes on her in her costume, he immediately took off his cowl. And so Kate Kane learned that Batman was her cousin, Bruce Wayne.

The Kanes and the Waynes had had a subtle feud going for well over a century, which was momentarily halted when Martha Kane married Thomas Wayne, the result of said marriage being the hulking crime fighter standing before her.  So seeing Bruce, processing the knowledge that her dipsjit, layabout, horn-dog cousin had been Batman this entire time, she had been convinced that he had somehow traveled back in time to steal her thunder.

However, Kate seemed to be the only one holding this grudge.  Bruce immediately invited her into the loose confederation of Mystery Men and Mystery Women that he had been forming to combat the societal ills of Gotham City.

Kate Kane met Selina Kyle, Barbara Gordon, Dick Grayson, Tim Drake, Orphan (whose name had been later revealed as Cassandra Cain)...

...and that unctious little shit Stephanie Brown.

And her first job under this little Bat Cosa Nostra was to take arms against La Llarona.

Yes, the same La Llarona from Central and South American folklore.  The ghost of the woman who drowned her kids in a blind rage, and spent the afterlife spreading havok and death looking for them.

Batwoman defeated La Llarona with the aid of John Constantine and a seance circle.  Or rather Constantine held down the circle. Batwoman just fought a bunch of zombies that La Llarona had summoned while he did his thing.

So it was that if there was a magical problem in Gotham City, then Kate Kane, Batwoman, the one trained to deal with soldiers and terrorists, had to get herself some Eye of Newt or whatever the hell, and solve the problem.

And this is why Batwoman found herself in a rainy graveyard one April night, holding a plant in a biohazard bag, waiting for one of her associates to show up.

 _Well_ that _just fucking figures, now doesn’t it?_

* * *

Batwoman was a Jewish girl in a Catholic graveyard.  Her contact in what had been playfully and unofficially called the _“Justice League Dark”_ (which solely dealt with threats magical in nature) had insisted upon meeting here.

Perched on the wall that separated the graves near the old abandoned Saint Pius X Church from the streets of Founder’s Island, the spring rain seeping into the red wig atop her head, Batwoman cut an imposing figure: Five-eleven, most of which was leg, and the Bat-mask she wore just made her seem even taller.  Her cape fluttered in the wet wind behind her. She wore a black Batsuit that hugged her tightly, lightweight and bullet resistant. Red utility belt, red boots, red lining to her cape, and the big red bulletproof Bat symbol ready to draw fire.

The plant that she had been asked to obtain from the JLD (an ugly gray thing that culminated in a bulb at the top and roots at the bottom), which was apparently going to be used in a ritual by the cell of the Religion of Crime that she had busted up earlier in the evening, was safely kept from the rain by the biohazard bag in which it was kept.  She gave the bag a shake to get the rain off, and stared up at the moon.

Still a Jewish girl in a Catholic graveyard.

The money of the Kane family had protected Kate from a lot in life (the county in which Gotham resided, after all, had been named after her family), but there were times rolling about Gotham that she felt a stranger.  That this gothic playground was not built for her. Victorian architecture. Tons of spires. Gargoyles everywhere. The research she had done into Gotham City showed that Christianity was in its bones: Its main architect, Cyrus Pinkney, was quoted as saying he’d designed the city as _“a bulwark against Godlessness.”_  He’d had indigenous folks in mind then, but she had no doubt he’d extend that to Jewish people, given the chance.

Gotham City was built to keep her out.

That feeling of otherness, however, was eclipsed by the satisfaction that not only did Pinkney fail in keeping her family out with his architectural forking of The Evil Eye, but Gotham actually depended on the Kanes.

But still...

This was why she liked Founder’s Island so much.  The church she was perched near was set to be torn down in the not-too-distant future.  Founder’s Island was where all the money was, so there was an imperative to keep things secular.  She lived here, her apartment building on the other side of the island. Here in this part of Gotham, she’d take sterile glass skyscrapers over the threatening ghosts of Catholicism, which she had nothing against in principle, but just wasn’t a part of.

 _Dig the costume design on the priests, though,_ the woman in the superhero outfit thought.

The ground beneath her rumbled, and began to shift.

Her JLD contact was here.

A grassy mound extended at the base of the wall upon which she was perched, until a broad base emerged as well, looking like a pair of broad, mossy shoulders.

The grassy structure kept coming from the soil until it resembled a brawny human form seven feet tall.

A few years back, Doctor Alec Holland was involved in an explosion in his laboratory, which was situated at the edge of a swamp in Louisiana, drenched in a chemical compound of his owndevice, Alec dove into the swamp to put himself out.

What emerged from that swamp, however, was not Alec Holland.

What emerged from that swamp was a collection of plant matter that _thought_ it was Alec Holland.

He was a plant elemental, connected to a mystical force of nature called _“The Green,”_ of which the creature before Batwoman at the present moment was its avatar.  He had the powers of a god, and it was hard some days for Batwoman to convince herself that he may not have been.

He didn’t answer to Alec Holland anymore.

Now, he was Swamp Thing.

Swamp Thing turned, and saw Batwoman posed on the wall.

**“Good evening… Katherine.”**

“Hey Swamp Thing,” Batwoman said.  “Ixnay on the ecret-identity-say, though.”

Swamp Thing squinted his glowing red eyes, and pondered her for a moment.

“Don’t say my real name,” Batwoman said.

 **“Of course,”** Swamp Thing said. **“You of The Red… have… so much to hide.”**

Batwoman had no idea what that meant.

 **“Do… you have it?”** Swamp Thing asked.

Batwoman held up the biohazard bag containing the plant that she had gotten from the Religion of Crime cell.

**“May I… have it, please?”**

Batwoman held it out to him, and Swamp Thing took it in his large, grassy mitt.

He plunged the plant, bag included, into the soft foliage of his chest.

Batwoman squinted with curiosity, and waited.

Swamp Thing groaned, The green leaves, vines, grass, moss, muck that made his intimidating form all began to dry, to turn brown.  Swamp Thing was enduring his own personal autumn.

Temporarily, though.  Soon that brown was replaced by its usual green. The dryness became flooded with rank moisture.  The bag extruded from his chest as though it had passed through a membrane from another reality. He took it from his chest with his hand, and held it out to her.

**“Please… Throw this away for me.”**

Batwoman took the bag.

“What just happened?” Batwoman asked.

**“The plant… is in The Green, now… It can hurt… no one.”**

“So we’re done for tonight?” she asked.

**“Yes… we are.”**

“Do you mind if I ask why we had to meet in a church graveyard?”

 **“I know… you live on this island,”** Swamp Thing said.   **“I was trying to be… polite.”**

Batwoman’s ruby red lips broke out into a dazzling smile against the pale white skin of her mouth.

“Don’t ever change, Swamp Thing.”

Batwoman reached for the grapnel gun on her utility belt.

**“Batwoman… Wait.”**

She stopped, and looked at Swamp Thing.

 **“I sense… a loneliness,”** Swamp Thing said.   **“Would you like… to talk?”**

Batwoman’s eyes narrowed.  Had he heard? Had someone told him?

The simple fact of the matter was that Renee Montoya had dumped her a few days ago.

Renee Montoya had met Kate Kane shortly after she had gotten back from her training last July.  They were both at a bar. They were both charming. They were both funny. They were both feeling a little tired after all these drinks.  They both hoped there was a bed nearby where they could crash.

The scars were easy to explain away.

The nights Kate wasn’t there weren’t.

Until finally it was too much for Renee to take.  She told Kate that she was secretive and emotionally unavailable, and moved all her stuff out.

And as much as Kate Kane was hopelessly in love with Renee Montoya, she had to admit she had a point.

Batwoman gazed into Swamp Thing’s eyes.   _That’s the thing, though.  I_ do _want to talk._

She’d heard about the love life of the former Alec Holland.  About how the woman he loved, Abigail Arcane, had become an Avatar of The Rot whereas Alec became Avatar of The Green.  Two people, deeply in live, cursed to immortality, and neither could touch each other without destroying themselves.

_So yeah, Swamp Thing, I want to talk.  It seems I have something in common with a Plant God._

But Batwoman just sighed.

“No,” she said.  “Not right now.”

* * *

Grapneling home, the only solace Batwoman could take right now was that Stephanie Brown had her own romantic problems at the moment.

Spoiler did not like Batwoman, and Batwoman did not know why.  They seemed to be on edge from the moment they met down in Bruce’s Batcave.

Stephanie Brown said her superhero name was going to be _“Spoiler.”_

To which Kate asked, after beating henchmen senseless, was she going to tell them that Bruce Willis was dead the entire time?

And thus, Stephanie responded with an entreaty for Kate to either get a tan or get fucked, she cared neither for the order, nor whether both actions were performed instead of just one.

Things had been going steadily downhill in the eight months since.

Kate’s first instinct was homophobia.  It was a handy, dandy stand-by that was correct more often than not, but it was put paid by the fact that Kate and Stephanie didn’t like each other before Steph knew Kate was gay.  Yeah, Steph could have looked at the tall woman with the short hair and eyeballed it, but Kate couldn’t be sure. And besides, if Steph had something against women who were on the butch side, she should have run screaming from the raspy-voiced, battle-scarred, deathly quiet, and eminently dangerous Cassandra Cain, yet somehow, Steph and Cass were immediate best friends.  Kate really didn’t know what Steph’s malfunction was.

The fact was that Stephanie Brown did not like Kate Kane, and Kate Kane was more than happy to return the favor.

So at the very least, Kate could take some schadenfreude at the fact that Stephanie’s love life was in every last bit of tatters as her own was.  For Tim Drake had broken up with Stephanie Brown.

According to Selina Kyle, with whom Kate was on good terms, Tim broke up with her because he felt that Steph was only going out with him because she just wanted a boyfriend, and didn’t really care who it was so long as she wasn’t alone.

Pity poor Tim Drake, as when Stephanie tried to explain to her bestie Cassandra just what getting dumped by one’s boyfriend entailed, Cass didn’t fully understand, and thought he had hurt her grievously.  Cassandra Cain stalked through Wayne Manor until she found Tim Drake, whereupon she immediately punched him in the throat. Leaving Stephanie to not only calm Cass down, but to profusely apologize to her ex.

Kate had the giggles for an hour when she heard that.  Then she bought Tim a fifty dollar gift card to Best Buy because she felt bad.

Batwoman touched down on a rooftop a few blocks away from the apartment building she owned.  

She felt bad for being an adult rejoicing in the romantic troubles of an eighteen-year-old girl.

A bit.

A tiny bit.

A miniscule, microscopic bit, before remembering that Stephanie Brown was a superhero, and thus taking other people’s lives into her hands.  If Steph was old enough for that, she was old enough for Kate to laugh at.

Batwoman took a step forward…

...and almost tripped over an exposed cable next to an air conditioning unit.

She staggered, and stopped.  Batwoman looked behind her at the cable.

She silently thanked Swamp Thing for doing his thing on her home island.  She suddenly felt like she was too tired to be out tonight.

* * *

Kate Kane had bought an entire apartment building for herself after coming back from her training eight months ago.  The former Barton Arms, erected in 1928, was now officially listed by Gotham City as the R.H. Kane Building.

And Kate Kane was the landlady, and sole tenant.

Batwoman landed on the roof, and took the elevator down to the sub-basement, where all of her gadgets and weapons were located.  She put the Batsuit back in it’s display case, hung her wig out to dry and then took the elevator back up to her top floor apartment.

She stepped into the bathroom to shower the rain off, and in the midst of just standing there under the hot water, scratching her ass, staring off into space, her mind wandered to Zatanna.

_Ohhhhhh, Zatanna._

Kate was on good terms with Swamp Thing, with Doctor Fate (or as good of terms one can be with Doctor Fate), with Madame Xanadu, with various and sundry other magic using superheroes, but it was Zatanna Zatara that Batwoman looked the most forward to seeing.

For… obvious reasons.  Any woman who could make fishnets both elegant and timeless was a woman Kate wanted to know.

In the wake of getting dumped by a woman that she deeply loved, Kate did not feel the least bit guilty about this.  Partly because her fancy with Zatanna was harmless. Who said anything about _sleeping_ with her?  If Zatanna had a job opening for someone to just stand behind her and nod at everything she said, Kate Kane would apply, even with the knowledge of low pay and no pension.

Kate finished her long shower, toweled off, brushed her teeth, put on a pair of blue pajama bottoms and a gray tank top, and settled into her cold bed alone.

* * *

Sunlight streamed through the bedroom windows the next morning, but that wasn’t what woke Kate up.

What woke Kate up was someone’s finger, tracing long the skin of her back where her tank top ended.

She felt goosebumps raise on her arms, as she rolled over to see with whom she was sharing a bed.

The smile was the thing that Kate always looked for.  The brilliant teeth shining from behind full lips. Her eyes were next; bottomless near-black pools that sparkled from beneath arched eyebrows.  The fullness of her face offset by keen brown cheekbones. And her jet black hair, always seen in a ponytail, save for trips to the shower.

The woman of Kate Kane’s dreams was naked under the covers with her.

“Renee,” Kate said.  The name came out in a croak, borne aloft on morning breath.

“Good morning,” Renee Montoya said.

She reached out, wrapping her arms around the warm flesh of Renee’s back, tracing her fingers along the length of her spine, pressing her lips to hers.

Kate’s eyes opened.  Their lips parted from each other.

“You came back,” Kate said.

“I couldn’t live my life,” Renee said, “without… this.”

And with that, Renee reached into the back of Kate’s pajama bottoms, and grabbed a handful of her right ass cheek.

Kate gasped, then started giggling, burying her face into the blankets covering Renee’s chest, so she wouldn’t get pelted in the face with morning breath.

“Without this flat, pasty thing in my life,” Renee said, “I just don’t know what I’d do.  I’d start keening like an old Irish lady at a funeral. Or take up stamp collecting. I don’t know which is worse.”

They took a moment to just look into each other’s eyes, bathed in old-school Technicolor morning light, before Renee tried to leave the bed.

“I have to g--”

Kate reached out, and pulled Renee back into bed.  She opened her mouth and dragged her teeth across Renee’s collarbone.

Renee’s reaction was immediate.

 _“Hooohhhhhhhh,_ you don’t play fair!”

Renee looked down at Kate, who moved up and kissed Renee again, working her tongue into her mouth, morning breath be damned.

They broke the kiss, and looked at each other.

“Someone’s hungry this morning,” Renee said.

“Mmm-hmm.”

“You gonna be hungry tonight?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Good,” Renee said.  “Because I really do have to shower.  I have to be at Central at ten-thirty.”

She briefly kissed Kate on the forehead, and got out of the bed.  She padded, naked, toward the hallway that led to the bathroom.

Kate looked after her.  She thanked the stars that while her own posterior may have been, in Renee’s words, _“flat and pasty,”_ Renee suffered from neither affliction.

She basked in the sunlight for a moment, listening to the shower in the bathroom start, before the doorbell rang.

Kate slowly disentangled herself from her covers, and walked barefoot to the south side of the apartment where the door was located.

She looked through the peep-hole, and saw a blonde female someone looking down at their shoes.

Kate opened the door, and this blonde woman looked at her.

She was a healthy five-eight with hard blue eyes.  She was in her fifties, but the lines on her face lent her an air of imperviousness instead of fatigue.  Her graying blonde hair was wrapped tight to her head in a bun.

This woman surveyed Kate with upraised eyebrows as Kate stood there with a realization slowly dawning on her.

This woman was Gabrielle Kane.

Kate’s mother.

The thing that was giving Kate trouble at the moment was that Gabrielle Kane had been dead for seventeen years.

* * *

_It was Kate and Beth’s twelfth birthday, and they wanted waffles and chocolate._

_Their father had been stationed in Brussels, but was currently away on assignment.  He missed their big day._

_It was with great whining and cajoling that Kate and her twin sister Beth got out of going to school that day.  No one in the family wanted to move from Fort Bragg to Belgium to begin with, and by heavens, they were owed this one thing on their birthday._

_And Captain Gabrielle Kane of the United States Army, loving woman that she was, relented.  All three got out of their uniforms and into civilian clothes. They left their apartment building.  Gabrielle said hello to the military driver who was assigned to them, and the four piled into a black towncar.  Their destination? The Grand Hotel, where their crispy, chocolatey quarry was located._

_They didn’t make it two blocks, before the car was rammed into by a van containing four terrorists.  Kate learned years later that they were Belgian nationals, protesting the American presence in their country._

_The lead terrorist, a blonde man with blue eyes, put two bullets into their driver’s chest, before binding the Kane sisters and their mother, and putting black bags over their heads._

_For little Kate, the next hour passed in darkness.  They jostled in the back of the terrorists’ van until it came to a stop, and they were pushed blind into somewhere big and echoey._

_Kate was shoved into a chair as the men who had kidnapped with each other converse in rapid French that she didn’t understand._

_A rustle of fabric, and Kate could hear her mother._

_“I don’t know what you want,” Gabrielle said.  “But don’t be stupid here. You put a stop to this, and there won’t be anything we can do to you, but if you do anything to an Amer--”_

_Kate heard a clicking sound, like the kind Dad’s guns made on the range._

_“Wait,” Kate heard Gabrielle say.  “Wait! No! ST--”_

**_BLAM!_ **

_What Kate heard next was the sanity of Gabrielle Kane clawing itself to pieces._

_“NO!  YOU MOTHERFUCKER!  I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU!  I’LL--”_

**_BLAM!_ **

_And that was the last time Kate Kane ever heard her mother’s voice._

_A rancid smell came into Kate’s nostrils through the bag over her head.  Like on the range._

_She heard shattering glass.  A door being busted open. And the soundscape hit the upper decibels with pops and bangs to the point that Kate’s ears started ringing when the noise finally began to subside._

_The bag was ripped off her head, and there was dad, Jacob Kane, sweat on his face and tears in his eyes._

_He untied his daughter from the chair to which she was bound, and picked her up._

_“Close your eyes, Kate,” Jacob said.  “Can you do that for me?”_

_Kate nodded, and closed her eyes,  She felt herself being walked away again but perhaps, for no other reason that she was told not to, she opened her eyes._

_Her twin sister and her mother were under blankets on the cold, stone floor next to shell casings and dead terrorists.  American soldiers scanned the room._

_“Don’t look,” Jacob said again, his voice on the verge of tears.  “Dear God, don’t look.”_

_Elizabeth Kane was entombed in the Kane family mausoleum in Gotham City._

_Gabrielle Kane, in accordance with her last will and testament, was interred at Arlington National Cemetery._

_At both funerals, Katherine Elizabeth Kane swore that she would grow up big.  She would grow up strong. And she would never let anything like this happen to anyone again._

_She thought that mean she would serve in the uniform of the United States Army._

_She wound up serving in a mask and a cape._

* * *

“Someone forgot to set their alarm clock,” Gabrielle Kane said.

The eyes hadn’t changed.  Those blue eyes that were so warm when she and Beth were being good, and so cold and terrifying when they were being bad, like switching places at school just to mess with their teachers.

Kate opened her mouth, and no sound came out.

Gabrielle folded her arms in her white blouse.  “For brunch.”

Kate opened her mouth, and she felt as though her words were not entirely her own.

“Right,’ Kate said.  “Brunch. At the manor.  It’s just that Renee’s here, she’s in the shower, she has to go to to work at ten-thirty.”

“Are you going to make your mother wait outside your apartment all day?” Gabrielle asked.

Kate closed her eyes.  “Right. Sorry. Just… Brain fart.”

She stood away from the doorway.  Gabrielle entered, and Kate closed the door behind her.

As Gabrielle walked in and sat on the sofa in the living room, she asked “You could just use the shower in one of the other apartments in this building.  It’s so strange no one else lives here.”

“I’m on the solitary side.,” Kate said.  “Plus, there are no neighbors who would sell the trash of one of the Kane Twins to the Gotham tabloids.”

“There are plenty of houses on the outskirts you could move into.”

“And miss the city?”

Gabrielle sighed.  “You’re solitary, but you can’t stand to miss out on the people.  I’ve raised a strange daughter.”

“That’s not nice,” Kate said.  “Calling Beth strange like that.”

Gabrielle smiled.  There was something bothering Kate, but she wasn’t quite sure what.

“Could, um… Could you excuse me for a sec?” Kate asked.  “Th-There’s something I need to check on.”

Gabrielle spread out her arms and said “It’s your apartment.”

Kate nodded, turned, and headed toward the bathroom.

She opened the door, and was hit in the face by the steam from the shower, which currently held Renee Montoya.

Kate ran a hand across the mirror to wipe off the fog, and looked at herself.

There is a strange phenomenon among people that, when they get a haircut and see themselves in their own bathroom mirror for the first time, they startle themselves.  After all, they didn’t look like that when they gazed into that mirror _last_ time.

And this was the strange phenomenon that Kate Kane felt right now.

For some reason that escaped her, Kate expected to see her red hair in a rough, short cut little longer than a pixie.  Not the bob that she’d been cultivating for more than a year.

Moreover, where were her tattoos?

Where were her muscles?

Where were her scars?

She got those scars training to be…

The word came out of Kate’s mouth in a slow, surprised, quiet drawl.

“Batwoman?”

What the hell was a _“Batwoman?”_  Was that some kind of weird stripper thing?  Or a professional wrestling gimmick?

And… and why was she under the impression that she had muscles?  Or scars? Or tattoos? Why did she have the ghastly notion that she’d tried to join the military?  If Mom and Dad heard that she was attempting to follow them into service, they’d have sat shiva for her in the middle of their simultaneous heart attacks.

Kate looked at herself, wondering just what had gotten into her today, when she heard Renee’s voice coming from the shower.

“Babe,” Renee said, “please don’t tell you me you’re so thirsty that you’re gonna try and screw me in the shower with your mom in the other room.”

* * *

Kate left the bathroom, and conversed with Gabrielle in the living room, mostly about the spring hydrangeas that she’d planted outside the manor.  A few minutes after that, Renee came out in her bathrobe, said hi to Gabrielle, then went into Kate’s bedroom to get ready.

But Kate had already gotten her clothes from her dresser; a pair of khakis and a white t-shirt.  She took these, along with her underwear and socks, to the bathroom, and set them on the lid of the toilet as she showered.  She came out of the bathroom half an hour later, freshly scrubbed, teeth brushed, makeup applied, feeling clean, and raring to go.

Gabrielle asked when Renee was going to make an honest woman out of her.

To which Kate replied that if she wanted a wedding to plan _that_ badly, then, well, that was what Beth was for.

Gabrielle had parked her black BMW convertible on the curb outside the R.H. Kane building.  Kate got in the passenger’s seat, and off they went on a brisk and sunny April day.

Gotham City was so pretty in the afternoon sun.  The street sweepers were patrolling Menelaus Boulevard, but there was nothing to sweep.  In the shadow of the Queen Consolidated building, a pair of cops, leaning against their squad car, smiled and waved at a pair of black skateboarders about fifteen years of age.  There was an entire family of cyclists, a mom, a dad, and two daughters in the bike lane next to the BMW, and Kate could see that they were all grinning.

This city was so inviting.  

So safe…

* * *

Kane Manor was on the Gotham outskirts, erected one year before Wayne Manor, but not quite as big.  The grounds edged on Slaughter Swamp, but thankfully the smell didn’t carry over.

Gabrielle pulled the BMW up to the front entrance of the Manor, and the Kane family driver, Armand, swiftly entered the BMW in their wake, to take it back to the garage.  The Manor’s head butler, Royston, bowed deeply to them, and opened the doors so that they might enter the spacious foyer.

Jacob and Gabrielle Kane had had enough of the military life after they had been stationed in Brussels seventeen years ago.  They retired after their bit was over to come back to Gotham, and live like the old money they were. They’d paid to have Kane Manor renovated, and hired Royston.  They wanted to look the part, so they insisted on having the head butler be a British import.

Gabrielle walked the long hallway, bedecked by paintings and with a marble floor serving as its foundation, until they got to the dining room.

The smell from the hallway told Kate what was inside before the sight did.

Kane Manor had the best kitchen staff money could buy, but there were days when Jacob and Gabrielle (in a term that they both told Kate was from their military days) _“Feeling Plebeian.”_  So Kate saw that the giant, ancient dining room table was adorned with KFC.

Jacob Kane, Kate’s father, was in a pair of khakis and a salmon polo shirt.  He wiped a strand of his thinning red hair out of his eyes and walked toward Kate with arms outstretched.

“There’s my Kate,” he said.

Kate spread her arms open as well.  “Good morning, Colonel.”

Jacob stopped himself dead in his tracks.  

 _“Colonel?”_ he asked in surprise.  “Is that a new nickname?  ‘Cause I never made it to _Colonel.”_

Kate shook her head.  “Right. Sorry. I just… Wow, I’ve been feeling weird today.  Is Beth here?”

From behind her, Kate heard a higher version of her own voice.  “What up?”

Kate turned around.

For Kate Kane, looking at her twin sister Beth was like looking into a magical mirror that showed what she’d look like were she straight. She was painfully sweet, single, and though they had the same eyes, Beth’s were in a better condition to take in the wonder of the world.  She was the head of The Kane Fund, which provided charitable aid to the foreign victims of supervillain attacks. Right now, they had their hands full trying to deal with the aftermath of the nuclear detonation in Qurac.

Kate wasn’t going to lie to herself though: as wonderful as Beth was, there was a part of her that was still a little on the miffed side that Beth was straight.  Dating for a lesbian vascillated between _“chore”_ and _“torture”_ even on the best of days, but if she had someone with whom she could walk into a bar and lay down a Redheaded Tegan and Sara vibe, they’d have both made out like bandits.   _Goddess_ bandits.  Renee was wonderful, but _getting_ to Renee would have been one hell of a lot easier.

And why the hell was Bath able to get a tan?  If Kate was out in the sun too long, she looked like a six foot tall angry zit.

_Identical twins my ass._

“Hey,” Kate said.  She examined her sister’s blue button-up and gray slacks as she moved in for the hug.

Once they parted, Gabrielle moved in.

“How are things with Dale?” she asked.

Beth sighed.  “We’re not getting back together, Mom.  We’re just… We’re different people.”

“And no other prospects?”

Beth squinted at Gabrielle, and Kate looked between the two of them.  One of Beth’s major weaknesses was the inability to know when Mom was just winding her up.

It was one of Kate’s weaknesses that she had a compulsion to pile on.

“Are you really that desperate for grandbabies, Mom?” Beth asked.

Gabrielle just shrugged, but Kate leaned in.

“You are delaying my destiny,” Kate said.

Beth furrowed her brow at Kate.  “For _grandbabies?”_

“You are delaying my destiny to one day become Lesbian Wine Aunt.”

“I, w-- _That’s not even a real thing!”_

“Do not mock me,” Kate said.  “Do not mock the _power…_ and the _majesty…_ of the Lesbian Wine Aunt.”

“Now you’re just making thi--”

“I _will not_ get my free acoustic guitar, I _will not_ get my autographed eight-by-ten of Kristen Stewart, I _will not_ be welcomed into the Confederation of Lesbian Wine Aunts until… you start… _incubating.”_

“Now, Kate,” Jacob said.  “You keep going on like this, you’ll give your sister a heart attack like your poor Aunt Martha.

Kate fought off the urge to say that both Aunt Martha and Uncle Thomas had been dead for thirty years, and for the life of her, she couldn’t imagine why.

It was then that Royston appeared in the dining room doorway.

“Master Jacob,” Royston said.  “There is a delivery waiting for you in the study.”

“Oh,” Jacob said.  “Thank you, Royston.  My dear, would you like to accompany me?”

Gabrielle narrowed her eyes.  “To look at your mail?”

Jacob smiled, put her arm around Gabrielle’s waist, and whispered something in her ear.

“Oh, no,” Beth said.  “They’re going to be gross, aren’t they?

Jacob pulled away.  Gabrielle’s expression softened.

“We’re going to look at the delivery,” she said, and she and her husband departed.

Kate and Beth looked after them as they left the dining room.

“You’re so cool,” Beth said.

Kate put her hands on her hips and sized up her sister.  “Where did _that_ come from?”

“You just _are,”_ Beth said.  “There’s this… this shell of cool that surrounds you.”

Kate didn’t know why this was weird to hear, weird that her sister was telling her this.  Beth’s smile was genuine, her words warm, but her eyes were just… dead.

“It’s like… Someone sees you, and they think you’re putting on this front of how nothing gets to you, and then they get to know you and they realize it’s true.  Nothing _does_ get to you.  I just… I just really like having you as a sister.”

This is the part where either one or both of them would tear up.

This is the part where they hug.

But for reasons Kate couldn’t explain, she felt like doing neither.  She actually felt like backing away from Beth, in case she tried something violent.  And that wasn’t like Beth at all. Beth would rather let a bee sting her then try to wave it away lest she injure it.

Beth reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone.  “I have to go make a call,” she said.

Kate wordlessly nodded, and Beth turned and walked out of the dining room, tapping something on her phone.

And now, Kate was alone.

She picked the styrofoam container of KFC cole slaw off the dining room table.  For a man who had been deployed all over the world, to the worst places to do the most dangerous things, Jacob Kane knew that keeping kosher under such circumstances was next to an impossibility.  So much so that he didn’t expect his family to live up to that standard either. Hence the KFC.

Renee once asked Kate why she didn’t keep kosher except for Chanukah and Passover.

Kate asked Renee in turn why she ate Cobb Salad on Fridays during Lent.

That was the end of that conversation.

She reached for a spoon from the dining room table, and sought to dig in.  Kate was the only one who ate the cole slaw anyway.

The spoon was hovering over the container, when Kate saw something that required setting them both back down, so unusual was its presence.

There was a door, a pink door, in the far dining room wall.

It was just any kind of pink door.  It was a hot neon pink straight out of a fourth grader’s Crayola marker box, almost perfectly designed to clash with not only everything else in the living room, but everything else in the house.

Jacob and Gabrielle paid top dollar for their interior decorators, and Kate knowing her parents, thought the person whose bright idea this was would have been run out of Kane Manor and fired into the sun.

It wasn’t that the door was such a vivid and garish pink, or rather not _just_ that.  It was the fact that there shouldn’t have been a door there at all.  The dining room was right next to the kitchen, and she could explain away a paint job to the door connecting the two rooms as simple lapse in taste and judgement, but what she could not explain was the fact that the normal door to the kitchen was a scant three feet away from this brand new pink one.

As she walked toward the pink door, she imagined the layout of this floor of Kane Manor in her memory.  If she was right, this new pink door would light right into the edge of the kitchen wall.

There was no reason for this door to be here at all.

Her right hand fell victim to a slight tremor as she stood before the pink door.  She had no literal sense of what lie beyond, but she had a grave and certain metaphorical sense.

Beyond lie danger.

Beyond lie damnation.

Beyond lie judgement.

And yet her trembling right hand reached for the tarnished and antique brass doorknob.

Her middle finger hovered over the doorknob now, fearful of… what, exactly?  She tried to imagine what was past the pink door, but her imagination failed her.  There was pain past this door, but it was a pain she must end--

“KAAAAAAAAAAAATE!”

Her father.  From the study.

Kate turned from the pink door and broke into a run.

She realized something as she ran down the great yawning hallway to the study, and it was that her echoing footfalls on the marble floor and the beating of her own heart were the only things she could hear.

The air conditioning in Kane Manor refrained from droning.

The birds outside refused to chirp.

She tore into the cramped study, and saw her mother, her father, and her twin sister standing in front of the desk with their backs to her.

“What is it?” Kate asked.  “What’s wrong?”

They were silent for a spell, before Jacob finally spoke.

“Haven’t we been good to you, Kate?”

Kate blinked, and tried to force words out of her mouth.  “I… uh… wha--”

She was silenced by a thundering and sickening crackle.

The heads of her three family members rotated a hundred-eighty degrees to glare at her, the bones in their necks cracking and dislocating as they did.

Their mouths were hanging open, their chins gently draping the tops of their spinal columns.  Their eyes had become murky gray orbs, with neither pupil nor iris, only reflecting the overhead lights in pinpricks contained in their center.

“We tried, Kate,” Jacob said.  “We really did. We gave you a clean, warm city to call your own.  We gave you new happy memories to replace your old sad ones. We gave you back the woman you love.  And you… repay us… like _this?”_

As they stepped away from the desk, they rotated their bodies so they were facing the same way as their heads, the bones in their spine continuing their heavy, sickening cacophony.

On the desk, next to an overturned FedEx box, was a black mask.

With a rush of memory that coated the inside of her stomach like foul medicine that burned but would eventually provide relief, Kate Kane knew that to be her mask.

 _Batwoman’s_ mask.

And looking at it, Kate knew it was real.  She hadn’t seen a speck of dirt, not a single imperfection in the city or its people since she woke up this morning.  But this mask, _her_ mask, was scuffed above the eyebrows, and beaded with moisture from an April evening’s rain.

The clouds of false memory in her brain snap-evaporated like a puddle under a blast of nuclear heat.

Her mother and her sister were actually dead.

Gotham City was actually a dirty hellhole.

Bruce Wayne was actually Batman.

Orphan was actually Cassandra Cain.

Stephanie Brown was actually a bitch.

And Katherine Rebecca Kane was actually in grave danger.

“Oh well,” the thing that was and was not her father said.  “We’ll put you down… **AnD We sHaLL TrY aGaIn.”**

Beth spread her arms wide, and from her mouth came an ear-splitting and alien screech, and she leapt across the room at Kate.

They made contact with such force that they both flew into the bookcase behind them, shattering two of the shelves, and covering them both in a waterfall of leatherbound English classics.

Beth straddled the prone Kate, grabbing her hair and slamming her head into the floor.

Kate tried to clear her head.  She wrapped her hands around Beth’s arm, when she realized that though she remembered her military training, her superhero training, she was, in this dreamscape, stuck in a body that had had neither.  Her efforts to wrest herself from her faux-sister’s iron grip were pitiful.

As Kate reached behind her, Beth reared her head back, and what Kate saw almost stopped her heart.

Beth’s jaw elongated, and her teeth grew several inches to translucent, needle-like points.  These were the teeth of the deep sea horrors that Kate had seen in her school’s _Encyclopedia Britannica_ set when she was nine, and had given her intermittent nightmares to this very day.

She howled yet again, before sinking her teeth into Kate’s shoulder.

Kate shrieked in agony.

A font of blood spewed forth from the flesh beneath Kate’s white t-shirt, and she cried out in pain as her right hand grasped behind her, finally finding what she was looking for.

A jagged piece of the bookshelf that the two of them had shattered.

Kate’s right hand gripped it, and plunged the sharp piece of wood deep into her sister’s right eye.

Beth screamed, gurgling on Kate’s blood, and pulled back, ripping small raw chunks of flesh from her shoulder as she did.  Kate cried out again.

As Kate gripped her profusely bleeding shoulder, getting into a seated position, Beth stood up, and yanked the wood from her eye.

There was nothing there.  Just a hollow, caucasian void of flesh, as though this Dream-Beth were made of eerily pale plasticine.

Then a geyser of thick gray sludge proffered forth from the gaping wound.  Beth rumbled and undulated, before falling over on her back.

Kate stood over her, sparing a glance for her mother and her father, whose jaws had also elongated with large, needle-like teeth, but they didn’t move.

**SNAP!  SNAP!**

Beth’s elbows bent backwards on the floor, and she arose on all fours.  Leaking gray slime onto the floor, Beth began to crab-walk toward her.

“Well _that_ just fucking figures, now doesn’t it?” Kate asked.

Kate ran out of the study, slamming the door behind her.

In the hallway, she looked at the seeping wound beneath her hand.

She was going to bleed out.

And Kate knew that if she died here, she would awaken back in her bed with a naked Renee tracing the inside of her tank top, and the whole ruse would begin again.

Kate also knew how to get out of this.

The pink door.

The door that called to her with weight and agony on the other end.

Gabrielle Kane blasted through the study door, rendering it to splinters.

Kate fixed her eyes on the doors down the hallway and started running.

Just once, she chanced a glance behind her during her mad dash.

Beth was crab-walking down the marble floor, leaking gray sludge as her lifeless head wobbled limply from her neck.

Gabrielle and Jacob, on the other hand, were crawling along the right and left walls respectively, digging their new, sharp claws into the expensive paintings, and kicking forward with their legs.

Kate tried to run faster, her thudding heart pumping her blood through her shoulder.

She made it to the dining room.  She slammed the door behind her, and locked it.  She yanked the tall cabinet full of fine china next to the door down so it could be used as an extra barricade.

Kate turned.  The giant window on the other end of the dining room gave her a peek at what the world had become while she was in the study.

The sky was a deep, cloudy red, and rain was rising from the grounds of Kane Manor, and into the sky.

And on the west end of the room beckoned the pink door.  She stalked towards it, her long strides slowing, as though the door itself was blockaded by a powerful and near-tangible field of radiation.

She reached out with her free hand, her middle finger was an inch from that brass doorknob, and…

“Baby?”

Kate stopped.  She heard one of her family members arms rip through the dining room door, and claw at the knob.

Renee Montoya was standing there in a red sundress in which Kate thought she looked pretty.  Her eyes were hopeful, her lips parted in need. She had her hands behind her back, looking bashful for all the world.

She wanted Kate to stay.

She needed her.

She was demure.

She was submissive.

And she… was not Renee Montoya at all.

Renee had worn that red sundress once, and only once, just to sate Kate’s curiosity as to how it looked on her.  And if she thought Kate was going to walk out their door to do something stupid, she would have held on to her with both hands and wouldn’t have let go.  She would have screamed at her, cursed at her in English and in Spanish to stay, but she would not beg. Her pride had a price tag that no one, not even Kate Kane, could pay.

That’s one of the many, many reasons Kate loved her.  

It was one of the many, many reasons she got on Kate’s nerves.

This woman in the sundress was not Renee Montoya at all.

Rather this silently pleading, openly supplicant thing was the person, deep down, that Kate Kane wanted Renee Montoya to be.  If everything is this place had been tailored to the needs of her subconscious, then this had to be true.

And more than the pain in her arm, more than the terror of dream-doppelgangers trying to get into the dining room to gnaw on her flesh, Kate Kane felt a bottomless chasm of burning shame.

Kate opened the pink door, and leapt through…

* * *

Batwoman awoke on a rooftop to the smell of soaked wig in specific, and the wet-dog-having-just-pissed-upon-itself stench of Gotham City in general.

Her hands and feet were tingling, and her heart was pounding beneath her ribs, as though making up for lost time.

She rolled over and sat up.  Rain dripping from her wig to the front of her Batsuit, Kate Kane looked at the surface of the rooftop…

...and saw the exposed cable next to the air conditioning unit that had tripped her.

She looked at her hands.

A thin gray smudge, of about the same color and texture of the gray sludge that had fonted from her Dream-Sister’s wounded eye, was visible on the pad of her right thumb.

* * *

For the second time in one night, though actually the first, Batwoman grapneled home to the R.H. Kane building.

She took off her armor in the sub-basement, and elevatored up to her apartment.

Kate showered off the rain and the hallucinations, before getting into a cozy white bathrobe, and pouring herself a drink.

She sat down at the desk in her bedroom, upon which her laptop was situated.

The headline on her Gotham _Gazette_ homepage almost slapped her in the face.

**“ELIGIBLE NO MORE”**

The story accompanying the headline told of the big news that had hit Gotham City while Kate Kane had been out being Batwoman.

Billionaire playboy and tech magnate Bruce Wayne was engaged to be married to the head of Kyle Security, the former Catwoman Selina Kyle.

 _Good for them,_ Kate thought, not really feeling one way or the other about it, before she brought up Skype.

She had met many colleagues and acquaintances during her time doing work for Justice League Dark, but of them all, there was only one that Kate Kane considered a true and honest friend.

And that friend was Detective Chimp.

Given the name Bobo T. Chimpanzee, Detective Chimp was trained at a young age in the art of deduction to bring in carnival-goers.  Through a long and winding series of circumstances, Bob drank from the Fountain of Youth, which not only granted him immortality, but also bestowed upon him the ability to speak to any creature, even animals, in their native language without the need for translation.

Bobo also had a jones for booze, and the second Kate laid eyes on his image on the screen of her laptop, sitting there on the couch in his shirt-sleeves and suspenders, she could tell he had to be on at least his second drink of the night.

“Hey, Kate!”

“Yo yo, Bobo,” Kate said.  “Whatcha drinkin’ tonight?”

“Kentucky Bourbon, Mademoiselle.  You?”

“Chivas and milk.”

“Pussy.”

“I am what I eat.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

They both raised their glasses, and took a drink.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?” Bobo asked.

“I can’t talk to my friend?”

“Kind of you to say,” Bobo said.  “But no. No you can’t.”

Kate grinned.  “What was that plant?”

“What plant?”

“The plant I gave to Swamp Thing.”

“Ohhhhh,” Bobo said after he swallowed some of his drink.  “That plant. It’s a cross-blend of the common daffodil with an outer space plant called the Black Mercy.  To top it all off, there’s a curse placed upon them once they bloom. They show you your heart’s desire, and the Religion of Crime uses them to weed out the weak among their acolytes.  If you can walk away from your version of perfection to serve them, you’re in. You don’t, the plant keeps you there until your heart stops.”

“Hmm,” said Kate.  “I got sap on my glove.  Either from the plant itself, or the biohazard bag I had to dispose of after Swamp Thing gave it back to me.”

“You just have to inhale it,” Bobo said.  “It’s odorless, too. Why common terrorists haven’t put that thing to use yet, I’ll never know.  But if you broke out, then hey, congratulations, you’re in the Religion of Crime.”

“How long to you have to be under before your heart stops?” Kate asked.

“Eh, few minutes,” said Bobo.  “Thing is though, even after your heart stops, your brain still has about six minutes of brain activity.  But you’ll lose all sense of time passing. You could live a lifetime and die of old age in that place in your head in those six minutes, and you’d have no way of knowing.”

Kate blinked.  The vision of that Dream-Renee, standing there in that red sundress, haunted her.

Renee dumped Kate because she kept secrets.  She stayed out all night, and then lied about where she’d been.

But why was that?

_Because I’m a superhero._

Kate had to wonder, however, how true that was.

Her mother and her sister had been taken away from her.  Kate Kane’s entire being shrieked for justice, and she thought the military would provide that, before that was taken away as well.

But to go from prospective soldier to masked vigilante was quite a jump.

Kate reckoned that if justice, on its face, really mattered to her, if all she wanted to do was protect people form what happened to her family, then she could have just moved to a city where the Kane name didn’t mean dick, and became a cop.

But no.  That wouldn’t have done at all.

The more she thought about it, it seemed less likely that Kate was secretive and private because she was a superhero, and it seemed more likely that she became a superhero because she was secretive and private.

 _“Someone sees you,”_ the Dream-Beth said, _“and they think you’re putting on this front of how nothing gets to you, and then they get to know you and they realize it’s true.  Nothing_ does _get to you.”_

But that wasn’t true.

She loved her family, she wanted to serve, and both of those things were taken away from her.

Loving something meant a force, seen or unseen, would take it away from her.  

Love cost quite a bit.

So making herself cool, unflappable, unloveable after a fashion, would solve a lot of problems for the people in her life, wouldn’t it?  

_You may not have Kate Kane in your life, but feel free to avail yourself of The Kate Kane Advertisement.  The air of super-cool hides the mess, trust me on that one._

Kate had to admit to herself that her ideal dream woman had no height or weight requirement, no racial discrimination, no hair color preferences.

Kate Kane’s ideal girl, however, would have to be able to sit at home every night while Kate was away, and not ask too many questions.

And that shame she felt in that dining room, looking at her own idealized version of Renee Montoya came back to her.

“I’d have known,” Kate said after she took a sip of her drink.  “Trust me, I’d have known.”

* * *

**_TO BE CONTINUED_ **


End file.
